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At Least 29 Survive Christmas Plane Crash, But Dozens Feared Dead; Pope Francis Calls To End Wars In Gaza, Ukraine In Christmas Speech; Trump: I'll Direct DOJ To "Vigorously Pursue The Death Penalty". Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 25, 2024 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[09:00:52]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us on this Christmas Day edition of CNN Newsroom. I am Kate Bolduan. Merry Christmas, everyone.

We are following breaking news this morning out of Central Asia that we want to get to first. At least 29 people have survived a Christmas morning plane crash, though many more are feared dead, 67 passengers and crew members were on board the plane. A warning some of the video we're going to show you may -- you might find disturbing this morning. It was taken by a witness on the scene who saw first responders and civilians rushing to help survivors get to safety. You can see the plane. It appears to split in -- be split in half. Many of the survivors appeared truly dazed and all of them, those who survived were taken to the hospital. The Azerbaijan Airlines flight went down near a coastal city in Kazakhstan.

Joining us right now is CNN safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector, David Soucie. David, thank you so much for jumping on this morning. Really amazing and terrifying images coming out of this. Some of the video that has been seen shows the plane, you know, erratically the airfield before it crashed. And then as it hit the ground, the aircraft bursting into flames. And now we see this video, you know, as rescue workers are trying to make it there almost immediately, we're told. What do you see in this video?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, it's -- obviously a tragic accident here, but there's nothing so far that tells us what caused it. That we do see that not only was the aircraft going up and down, but it's going left and right. There's total loss of control as far as how he tried to land the aircraft. But on the scene, the miraculous survival of 22 people is just amazing that that happened.

But you can see that the reason that happened is the initial impact site. The aircraft was nose down and caused that initial impact to happen. That's where the engines and everything burst on fire. Now, the tail of the aircraft broke loose and that moved far away from the initial impact site. It continued to travel and that absorbs the energy that's going on with the aircraft. So that's why there were so many survivors, apparently from that tail section. And that's what they're working that -- with there as far as getting them out and trying to see what happened to the aircraft.

BOLDUAN: And I -- I -- I -- talk to me more about that, because when you hear, I mean, you hear a -- a commercial jet crashing and then you hear at least 28 people surviving, including two children, I mean, how. Tell me more about the -- the -- I mean, maybe this -- it is -- it's more, maybe luck than training that led to people being able to survive here, David.

SOUCIE: Yes. It does have a lot to do with luck. But if we look back at other accidents where there have been survivors, such as the Sioux City accident, Richard could tell us more about that, actually, because Richard was there at the site on that one. But in that case, most all of the survivors were in the tail section of the aircraft. The reason that happens is because, as I was mentioning before, the first initial impact is wings forward. And when that happens, the tail of the engine, the tail of the aircraft, most of that energy is absorbed by that initial impact and the tail of the aircraft breaks loose. And then you can see it's far away from any fire or any other dangers with the aircraft on the impact. So primarily that's how they survive is after that energy absorbed by the front part of the aircraft.

BOLDUAN: There -- there's some preliminary information, and of course, this all can change as the investigation continues, but there's some preliminary information that seems to suggest that the pilot had decided to make -- try to make an emergency landing after it experienced a bird strike. And people remember that a bird strike was, I mean, we've heard of many accidents caused by bird strikes, but also famously, a bird strike was what caused the emergency landing -- landing that became the miracle on the Hudson back in -- in 2009. Why are bird strikes so potentially crippling for aircraft?

SOUCIE: Well, the engines are most vulnerable to the bird strikes. And when we talk about bird strike, people think of a bird hitting the airplane. That's not what happens. In order to cause that kind of damage, it's a huge flock of aircraft -- of -- of birds that the aircraft flies through and it ingests and it blocks the inflow of air to the engines. When that happens, the -- the energy that's in the engine backfires kind of it goes backwards through the engine and causes damage to the front of the engine. And therefore, the engine cannot, like ingest it and make -- make the birds go through.

[09:05:24]

It just -- it damages itself because the airflow is not there and the -- the combustion section of that engine is pushing forward and causes damage to the engine, which is not recoverable. Now, occasionally birds, when there's just a few, they can get right through that turbine engine and everything is fine, it goes through and then they do an inspection after the fact.

But when it causes this kind of damages, and again, it's too early to know that this is exactly the cause. But if it is the cause, that's -- that's the history of bird strikes and why they cause so much damage.

BOLDUAN: Yes. David, thank you very much for jumping on this morning. It's always good to see you. Thanks so much.

SOUCIE: Of course. You as well, Kate. And Merry Christmas considering the circumstances.

BOLDUAN: You, too. Thank you so much.

Let's turn now on that note. Let's turn now to the Vatican, where Pope Francis delivered his 12th annual Christmas blessing this morning, including an urgent call for peace and the end of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb is joining us now, watching all of it for us. Christopher, tell us more about the Pope's message today.

CHRISTOPHER LAMB, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pope Francis emphasizing that the message of Christmas is one of reconciliation, one of peace. He's calling on countries to lay down their arms for enemies to be reconciled. And he had specific words about Ukraine and Gaza and the conflicts there. And this is what he had to say.

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POPE FRANCIS (through translator): May the sound of weapons be silenced in Ukraine. May there be the boldness needed to open the door to negotiation. May the sound of arms be silenced in the Middle East. In contemplating the crib of Bethlehem, I think of the Christian communities in Israel and Palestine, and -- and particularly to the dear community of Gaza, where the humanitarian situation is extremely grave.

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LAMB: Now, the Pope speaking after Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure just today, Christmas Day. And of course, the Pope has consistently called for negotiated peace settlement in Russia's war against Ukraine. The Pope's also been outspoken recently about what's been happening in Gaza, describing recent airstrikes as cruelty.

Now, Francis, speaking in the context of just launching the Catholic Church's jubilee year, a major event focused on forgiveness and pilgrimage, so the 88-year-old pontiff, although he certainly has difficulty physically, is continuing with a very, very full schedule of events in the coming days.

BOLDUAN: And in the U.K., Christopher, the royal family is also marking Christmas Day with public appearances and it's been a, I mean for so many, but including the Royal family, it's been a long, challenging year for them. What -- what is this that I'm hearing about King Charles is going to be breaking with at least one tradition?

LAMB: Yes, normally the King would give his Christmas message from one of the royal palaces, but this year he's going to be delivering it from the Fitzrovia Chapel, a former hospital. The chapel still associated very much with -- with health and well-being. This of course coming at the end of the year when the King has had treatment for cancer and his daughter-in-law, the Princess of Wales, also having cancer treatment. So very challenging years health wise for the royals. The King wanting to emphasize his support for health care workers and the health care sector by deciding to deliver the message from this chapel.

BOLDUAN: Yes, thankful for them all the time. You can tell the royal family. Very thankful for those health care workers, all of them, especially this year. Christopher Lamb, it's good to see you. Thank you so much.

LAMB: Thank you. Have a good day.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us -- you too. It technically is a white Christmas, technically for the first time in 15 years for people in New York. sledders seen hitting the slopes of New York City yesterday after a Christmas Eve storm blanketed the city. But man, that snow starting to move out really quick, especially on the road. Some of it's still on the ground there, but definitely not down the avenue that I was driving on to get here to work today.

Out west though, the mountain regions clearly saw quite a bit more and millions are preparing for yet another hit of winter weather to come. Let's get over to Chad Myers who's tracking all of it for us. A technical white Christmas in New York City. What do you see, Chad?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: A little bit of snow still left in the grass. That's really about it. But the problem is it got to about 36 in New York City and also down to Philly yesterday, but down to 27 overnight. So there are some icy patches out there. So not the only place where we saw the white Christmas in the parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, even into North Dakota. A wet Christmas down in parts of Louisiana, this will be the story of the day.

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Some spots could pick up 2 to 3 inches of rain. Now, it's a very dry drought area, so we'll take the rain when we can get it. We just don't need 5 or 6 inches over Baton Rouge all at one time. The storm does move to the east. We get some rain a little bit farther to the east tomorrow. But that rain really gets to the Northeast where the airports are on Sunday. So that may be a little bit on the slow side when you get to your Sunday morning flights with all of that rain and all of that cloud cover from New York all the way down to Philadelphia.

There is the snow in the west and they will take it. They are 170 percent of normal in parts of the Sierra. And they need that rain, they need that water, they need that snow. They'll -- they'll drink it later in the year. But it will certainly put the potential no forest fires for the rest of the season up there.

BOLDUAN: Chad, thanks for coming in. It's good to see you.

MYERS: Good to see you. Merry Christmas. BOLDUAN: You too.

Coming up for us, still, President-elect Donald Trump promising to vigorously pursue the death penalty once he takes office. What that means in reality now, after President Biden took the big step of commuting the sentences of almost all federal death row inmates.

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BOLDUAN: So President-elect Donald Trump now promising that when he takes office once again, the Department of Justice will vigorously pursue the death penalty. Those are his words. That is after President Biden commuted nearly every federal death sentence to life in prison without parole. CNN's Steve Contorno has much more on this one for us. It's good to see you, Steve. And Steve, this is a position that he campaigned on, but what do you think is going on behind it?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Kate, Donald Trump during the campaign trail promised to not only restart executions once again, but he promised to potentially expand the definition of who might be eligible for capital punishment by the federal government. Take a listen to what he had to say during the campaign.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: I'm hereby calling for the death penalty for any migrant that kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer.

I said I'd like you to give the death penalty to people that are making fentanyl and sending it over to our country.

We have to bring in the death penalty if we want to stop the infestation of drugs coming into our country.

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CONTORNO: That brings us to yesterday where Donald Trump posted on Truth Social in response to Biden's action saying, quote, as soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers and monsters. We will be a nation of law and order again. And that coming, of course, in response to President Joe Biden commuting the sentence of 37 of 40 people currently on death row and instead giving them life sentences instead of the death penalty.

And -- and I should point out that Biden in his statement specifically said that part of his -- his reasoning behind this was because he didn't want his next -- the next administration to come in and continue the exec -- executions that he paused. Donald Trump, though, has long been someone who believed in law and order, as he said, and he was one of someone who aggressively pursued executions during his first term as president and now Kate promising to do that once again. BOLDUAN: Sure is. It's good to see you, Steve. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Joining us right now to talk more about this is Tia Mitchell, Washington bureau chief for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Ron Brownstein, CNN senior political analyst and senior editor at the Atlantic. Good to see you guys. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays.

Tia --

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Merry Christmas.

BOLDUAN: Good morning. After what Joe Biden did, how vigorously can Donald Trump go after the death penalty?

MITCHELL: Well, there's not a lot he can do quickly. He can try to work with Congress to expand the list of crimes that are eligible for the death penalty. I thought it was very telling in the statement that Steve just shared from Pres -- President-elect Trump, he specifically mentioned rapists. There are court decisions that say rapists cannot be sent to the death penalty without also being found guilty of murder, for example.

So if Donald Trump wants to give rapists the death penalty, then he's going to have to get a change in law or he's going to face court challenges. That's just one example of the many things that stand in his way if he wants to expand the use of the death penalty.

BOLDUAN: And, Ron, I mean, I spoke with a Democratic member of Congress just this week who was pretty critical of Joe Biden for -- for using, kind of using this move, this power of the presidency to very clearly hamper the next administration's abilities. Where is the American public generally on this, do you think?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, the death penalty is really more of a symbol than a practical tool in fighting crime. I mean, you know, back in 1994, that crime bill that became such an issue a generation later in Democratic politics, it added, I believe it was 60 more offenses to the federal death penalty. And you saw how that eliminated crime in the U.S. right?

I mean, the -- the federal death penalty just isn't applied that often. And the death penalty in general is so expensive and time consuming to, you know, actually finish a sentence that it really is not that critical a lever, any criminologist will tell you. But it is a powerful cultural symbol. And certainly, you know, Trump wants to be seen as being as tough on crime as he can, and so it's valuable to him in that way. I do not think there are going to be a lot of federal executions regardless of what Biden did.

BOLDUAN: Yes. So let me move on to this, Ron, I'll start with you. The -- the Panama Canal threat --

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. BOLDUAN: -- that came this week from Donald Trump, or maybe a promise, it's now blown up into becoming an even bigger thing. You have, you know, presidents of Panama, past and present, banding together, speaking out against what Donald Trump wants to do. And I'm looking at this in the context of this could fit into the category of what was the focus of your recent article in The Atlantic --

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BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: -- and talking about the unrestrained presidency. I'll read part of your wonderful words to you and to everyone else, saying that the forces that restrained and often frustrated Trump during his first term have all palpably weakened. That will be a mixed blessing for him and for the Republican Party. There's less chance that the forces inside or outside his administration will thwart Trump's marquee campaign proposals.

You go on to write, but there will also be fewer obstacles to the kind of polarizing ideas that got stopped during Trump's first term. Talk me through this more.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: It's a really great read.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, thank you. Well, look, you know, I think we forget how many institutional constraints Donald Trump faced when he arrived in 2017. He had Republican leadership in the House and the Senate in Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, who were very dubious of him at that point. There was only a 4 to 4 Supreme Court with Anthony Kennedy as an unreliable vote from a conservative perspective. Business leaders kept their distance from him. The media, I think, was more, you know, kind of in a -- in a more aggressive posture of -- of oversight.

And most of those restraints are -- are reduced this time. And -- and I should have added that he was forced, really, because of his position within the Republican Party, to appoint a lot officials, senior officials who are not really part of his MAGA movement. And they ultimately said no to many of the polarized pushback on many of the most polarizing things that he wanted to do, like, you know, according to Mark Esper, use the National Guard to shoot racial justice protesters or seize -- use the military to seize voting machines or launch unilateral military strikes against Mexico without permission of the Mexican government.

All of those restraints are weaker this time. He is kind of constrained by a narrower House majority that can produce rebellions from the right on occasion, like we saw during the budget fight, you know, the -- the other day. But by and large, the kind of people who said no to many of Trump unbound -- Trump's unbound impulses are not going to be in the room this time. So what you are going to see, I think, is, you know, even more of these secondary firefights.

He was elected in part because he kept his focus overwhelmingly on two issues, you know, cutting your costs and gaining control of the border. And what we have seen in this transition, I think the unifying theme of the transition from Matt Gaetz to Panama to the debt ceiling is that, you know, Trump's impulsiveness is just undiminished, and his ability to keep his presidency focused on any central theme, I think is going to be very challenging, especially without the internal regulators that were there the first time.

BOLDUAN: And the other side of this coin that -- that Ron -- that Ron gets to in the piece is really perfectly summed up by Matt Bennett, a Democratic strategist. We -- we -- he's -- he's a centrist Democrat. He was in the Clinton White House. He's been, obviously, we all know him very well. He's on the show all the time. And he -- and Tia, he told Ron this. The very crass political answer is Democrats benefit in the long run from Trump's stronger position, because Trump always goes too far when he is uninhibited. However, he is going to break things that are very hard to fix, and he is going to hurt people who are very vulnerable, whom my fellow Democrats and I are in the business to protect. So we can't root for that.

But to the top of what Matt Bennett's saying is, in a crass political sense, in the long run, what Ron is pointing to could benefit -- it could backfire on Trump and Republicans, could benefit Democrats. What do you see?

MITCHELL: Yes, I think that's a possibility, especially as we look towards the midterms, where we know already, just by being in power, the Republican Party is -- is at a deficit just going into the midterm elections, no matter what they do for the next two years. But if the Trump presidency is chaotic and, you know, everything we've seen from his first presidency to the transition, kind of predicts some chaos that could also bring the party down.

If -- if the Republican Party, if Congress, if Republicans Congress get pulled into all these kind of side conversations led by Donald Trump, the debt ceiling, Panama, Canada, Greenland, you know, other issues that we can't even fathom right now that all of a sudden the president starts speaking about, and they're not focused on the economy. They're not focused on immigration, then the -- this mandate that they say they have will be unfulfilled. And I think there will be a lot of voters who will be disappointed if what they said they elected Trump for doesn't come to fruition, because we know there are a lot of voters who told us, I don't really like the guy. I don't -- I don't like all that he stands for. But the thing he said he's going to do, I believe he can do it, and therefore I'm going to trust him with four more years.

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His mandate, if there is one, is very narrow, as Ron just mentioned. And if he keeps on these sidetracked conversations, I think American people aren't going to respond well to that.

BOLDUAN: You're going to have -- at the very least, you're going to have a lot of elected Republicans working overtime and very hard to try to connect the border and the economy and inflation to all of these side issues that might pop up on the impulse of Donald Trump. We will see it. We will all see it play out. It's good to see you both. Thank you very much.

BROWNSTEIN: Happy holidays. Yes.

BOLDUAN: You too, Ron.

Coming up for us, the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris holds its first Christmas services since rebuilding and finally reopening after that catastrophic fire.

And also we're going to speak to a psychologist about what to do if you have a case of the holiday blues.

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BOLDUAN: The historic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris held its first Christmas Eve masses in five years. That is how long it took to rebuild that historic site after is newly destroyed in the devastating fire. Look how beautiful it is to see open once again. Thousands of worshipers attended the services at the -- at the cathedral. The Paris archbishop symbolically reopened Notre Dame's wooden doors earlier this month.